


The future in which you are

by StarberryCupcake



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Dragon Ball Super - Freeform, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 10:48:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13569006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarberryCupcake/pseuds/StarberryCupcake
Summary: She wasn't usually caught as off-guard as she was feeling. He didn’t tend to ask for something like this. Ordered, yes, maybe begged with embarrassment, but never ask in this hesitant, terrified way.He sighed. Breathed in. And let it out."I would like for us to have another child"





	The future in which you are

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this was an unexpected fic that happened while I was supposed to be writing something else. It's mostly based on the anime, with a very minor manga reference, I'll add more on that on the end notes. This is set right after the Future Trunks Saga in Dragon Ball Super. The title is from the song [Cassis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6nC9HTF5ow) by The GazettE, because I was feeling super nostalgic.

Bulma was staring out the window of her master bedroom, the night engulfing the landscape. She couldn't sleep. What happened with her son —her future son from another timeline, that is— had shaken her up more than she had expected.

She had been too distracted, during the whole thing, to process it properly. Adrenaline was keeping her occupied, like in the good old days when she was part of every adventure, every trip to outer space or encounter with a strange group of villains.

The time machine had been a project she had desired to complete for so long, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't crack the code her future self had developed. She resented that woman for her intellectual superiority, but then she remembered how she had been pushed to the limits of her capabilities by death and desolation. After that, she forgave her. She wouldn't trade knowledge for her son's well-being. Or Vegeta's life.

But once near-death experiences and science miracles had ended, once her _other_ son —because they would never be the same person to her, they were different, shaped by different lives, but no less _hers_ in her heart— had left to a brighter future, she was drained.

She felt as if she hadn't been able to stop shaking since they had come back from that dark, empty future. She wanted a cigarette, _badly_ , but she had worked too hard to let her resolve slip. She was all smiles when she said farewell to her son but had broken down bawling in the bathroom of her en-suite minutes later, emotions flooding back to her all at once.

It had been a long time since she had experienced the battlefield so close. And even more so, in such a personal manner.

She felt his characteristic warmth before his arms went around her. She leaned on him slightly, his scent, freshly out of the shower, intense and intoxicating. She knew he would come to her at some point. He always did when she tried hugging him in public and he rejected the PDA, as a form of apology, or maybe a compromise.

But this time it lingered. She knew he could feel her shaking, and he knew she had been crying. She complained and moaned in public, yes, but hated showing weakness in such a raw state. It was one of the many things they had in common.

She felt his lips on the nape of her neck and knew he was grounding himself with her presence as much as she was with his. He had confided once, not too long after Beerus had hit her, that he had made a habit of finding her ki to ground himself. That he had trouble sleeping without it near him, whenever he wasn't home.

She had just smirked and refrained from gloating. A bit.

"I never said I was sorry"

His voice broke the silence and her personal reverie. She felt she had missed half of a conversation that had been happening inside his head.

"For what?" she was still staring at the night and didn't turn.

It was easier for him this way, she knew. Whatever he was going to say, he needed the space.

"For how I treated you back when he showed up...the second time" his voice was close to her ear but it was low and almost a whisper "How I treated the three of you...you and them both"

She remembered a plane being attacked by Gero, a baby Trunks in her arms and an older one saving them both from an imminent death. She remembered Vegeta not even looking at her while he raged about Gero escaping. She remembered Future Trunks and his resentment towards a father who did nothing to help his family. A father who was there, unlike his own, but was as good as gone.

"I _am_ sorry" he admitted "I've been sorry for a long time"

"I know" she caressed his hands, his arms still around her "I've always known"

"I couldn't tell him...I didn't know how"

"I'm sure he knew too"

"Why have you..."

He was stalling, thinking. She gave him time. She had always given him time. She wasn't patient with many things but for him, she had always been. As he was patient with her.

"Why have you always taken me back?" he asked, after a long, empty silence.

His voice was shaking as much as her body and she knew he was more afraid of her answer than of his question.

She had known, for years she had known, that deep down inside, he felt he didn't deserve it all. That he didn't deserve their home, their kid, their life. That he didn't deserve _her_ . Years of slavery and neglect, of having only a memory of a long lost planet to carry him through life, had left him only with an empty title to claim anything he thought he deserved. He didn't believe he could _earn_ the good things. It hadn't taken much for her to see through all the princely bravado, and that scared him to death back then.

"Because I'm in love with you" she said, without turning around, but spying his dumbfounded expression on the window pane, painted in stars and dark blue sky.

He hid his face in her neck. This was the part where he usually let go, embarrassed, and walked away. He didn't. He stayed.

"Why?" she felt the question sketched with his lips on her neck.

She smiled. She had asked herself that, with different levels of annoyance, very frequently during their life together.

"Well, it all started with a plan I had once..."

He sighed.

"This sounds like an annoyingly long story"

There he was.

"If you want to know, you need to shut up and listen" she said in mock anger.

He hugged her tighter. She smiled, pleased.

"When I was 16, I had my whole life figured out. I wanted to see the world but also make it my own, live adventures and conquer adversities with my incredible smarts and beauty" she felt him snort and pinched his hand in retaliation "So I did, I went on adventures and I met my best friend" he sighed in annoyance at that "Did I ever tell you that I shot him the first time I saw him?"

"You _what_?" he sounded both surprised and proud.

"That's a story for another time, though" she continued "The point is that, part of my very well thought-out life plan was falling in love with a dashing young man and living happily ever after with him" she sighed "and that young man turned out to be Yamcha"

He snorted with disdain. 

"We both know what happened with Yamcha but...there's a reason why I could still be friends with him after all the drama" she knew he was aware of what she was to say even if she had never admitted to it out loud "By the time we split, before I found out about the women and the cheating, I already knew I didn't love him anymore" she drew circles on the back of his hands absentmindedly "I was trying to make Yamcha work because I thought he was part of my plan, but after the juvenile romance faded, the excitement and novelty, there was not much left for us to connect through"

"I knew it" he was smirking against her skin and the feeling had turned too familiar not to know it by heart.

And he had. Before they had fallen into each other, before the sex and the passion, before the start of the rest of their lives, while she was still dating Yamcha and he was staying in Capsule Corporation, there was one night she was going to remember as long as she lived.

He had been training, she had been working, they ended up eating at the same ungodly hour of the night and, for some Kami forsaken reason —maybe sleep deprivation, maybe some newfound familiarity— they spent hours talking about space technology.

Saiyan technology, whatever Frieza had stolen and re-purposed, healing tanks, space ships, the things he had grew up around and she had never seen, the training facilities he had always wanted. She knew his heart had skipped a beat with respect and some trepidation when she admitted to having stolen Raditz's scouter from his corpse (or made Krillin do it for her) and how she had later blown up one of his pods remotely.

When she told him that it was probably good for the universe that they hadn't met before, he had stared at her, puzzled. She explained that with her technology and his power, Frieza would have had his ass handed to him much sooner and the universe would have been in worse hands if they had teamed up. That was the first time he had smiled at her as if she was a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.

It was easy. So, _so_ easy. He was smart and kept up with her train of thought and _listened_. She had never talked science like that with anyone who wasn't her dad, and nobody had ever listened with such respect to what she could do without questioning it or doubting her abilities. Or her tactics of robbing corpses.

"People always assumed" she continued, leaning on him even more "that this, you and me, had been just passion"

She knew him well enough to know that he was probably blushing at that.

"Just math, two lonely horny people and a bed...or a desk...or the floor of the gravity chamber..."

"I get it" he interrupted, frustrated and embarrassed.

She smirked.

"And I let them think that because the truth scared me too much to admit"

His embrace faltered.

"It scared me how deep my feelings for you actually were" his calloused hands were like a familiar map under her fingertips "and I didn't want to go on that path because the reality was that you would eventually leave...and then Trunks came along"

She had never been as terrified as the day she found out that she was pregnant with Trunks. She felt lost, scared and completely unprepared. She had never in her life doubted her capabilities to do anything, except then.

"I didn't know how to approach it and I didn't care about what you were to do after I told you" she remembered "but I knew one thing for sure: no matter what happened, he was my son. _Our_ son. And he deserved me to try my best for him, with or without you"

She closed her eyes, the memories of that time still ingrained in her retinas like a movie in her head.

"I was prepared for you to leave, so when you did, I wasn't thrown off" she frowned "I never wanted to ensnare you or keep you prisoner...you had been a prisoner for too long, Vegeta, and a home isn't a cell, the only way for you to find a home with us would be if you _chose_ it to be, not if I tied you to it" she opened her eyes and faced the night once more "I was, however, thrown off when you came back. I didn't know what you wanted, but no matter what went on between us, you are Trunks's father and even though I didn't want to keep you against your own will, you owed some loyalty to your son, and I knew you'd eventually get it"

"Get what?" his question was a whisper, the ghost of a sentence.

"That without you, he'd be another small Saiyan kid living among people who were unlike him, trying to learn who he was by other people's recounts" she smiled "So _that_ time, I guess I took you back because Trunks needed you as much as you needed him"

His embrace tightened again. She knew it was a 'thank you' hidden under layers of pride.

"After Babidi and Buu, it was tricky" she continued "But I knew deep down, you were still scared. It isn't easy to shake off a lifetime of what you've been through and accept familiarity and domesticity, but fuck it, Vegeta, when you killed those people..."

She felt him weaver in his grip, as if wondering whether she wanted to be let go, but she pulled him closer, her head finding the familiar spot on the crook of his neck.

"I made peace with the man you were many years ago, and I don't have any sort of high moral ground to be imparting judgment as many of my friends do" she continued "But seeing you kill those people right in front of me...it had been ages since I had last been scared of you and I had forgotten how it felt"

He kissed her head, once, twice, a caress of an apology for something that still hurt her, even if she knew why he had done it.

"Then you went and sacrificed yourself and I was both sad and upset and I wanted to bring you back to life so I could murder you all over again"

He smiled at that, she saw it in his reflection, and it suddenly felt like a lifetime ago, she couldn’t feel the fear when she was wrapped up in his arms in a room that had been _theirs_ for so long.

"It isn't easy but it doesn't have to be" she continued, confident "loving you, I mean, but even if it wasn't in my plan, I don't regret a second of it" she smiled "And, contrary to what you think, you _do_ deserve it"

There was silence then, a comfortable, peaceful silence. An acceptance.

He wanted to say something, she knew he did, but he was unsure.

"I have wanted to ask you something for a while," he said, at last, his arms loosening their grip "to ask you _for_ something, but I was afraid to do it"

Admitting fear was not a common thing with him, not even in intimate moments like this one. She turned, once he had let her go, and looked at him in the eyes. He seemed terrified. She hadn't seen him that scared in a long time.

"And what changed?" she asked, giving him time to process his thoughts.

"What happened with Trunks...with his timeline, his future" he sighed "Seeing all he had lost...all _we_ had lost in a world where we didn't get to have this"

He gestured at everything. Their room, the house, them. Their life together.

"The last time he was here I didn't get to process it like this, I didn't...I didn’t see all it means to me...to have a _home_ "

"And now you do"

"It made me want it even more...what I want to ask you"

She wasn't usually caught as off-guard as she was feeling. He didn’t tend to ask for something like this. Ordered, yes, maybe begged with embarrassment, but never ask in this hesitant, terrified way.

He sighed. Breathed in. And let it out.

"I would like for us to have another child"

Whatever Bulma was expecting, it was certainly not that. She felt like the world was tilting on its axis. She waited for him to take it back, to negate what he had said, but he didn't. He just looked at her, earnest, _terrified_ , waiting.  

"You're serious" it was a confirmation, not a question.

He nodded.

She needed that cigarette ASAP.

"I need to sit down" she said instead, moving towards the couch they had near the window.

She let herself fall, dizzy, unable to process what he had asked.

"You have been thinking about this?" he made it seem like it had been on his mind for a while and she couldn't conceive how.

"Yes" he said, still standing, still serious and determined and _scared_.

"And you're sure?"

"I am"

She hadn't even thought about it. Maybe in brief moments of daydreaming, wondering how it was for Chi Chi to deal with two of them at once, or when her mother very naively asked when she would get a granddaughter to dress up and teach cooking skills to. As if she hadn't had two daughters, though none of them had been as interested in cooking as in other skills, more up their father's alley.

They had been careful after Trunks. When they resumed their intimacy, they had been careful to avoid any surprises. They didn't even discuss it much, they were both on the same page about it. Or so she thought.

She had never actually had it listed as an option. Even less so when...

"I'm _old_ " she blurted out loud.

"What?" Vegeta looked puzzled, as if she was speaking in another language.

Bulma had never said that about herself in that tone. She probably wouldn't again.

"Chi Chi is younger than me and she's a _grandma_ already" she wasn't even looking at Vegeta, she was halfway talking to herself then, to the void, to nothing in particular.

She was stating a fact.

"What does she have to do with anything?" Vegeta frowned, confused and upset at not understanding her train of thought.

"How am I supposed to do this all over again _now_ ?" she looked at him, frowning "I was young when I had Trunks and he was so... _so Saiyan_ " she was angry now, upset at him treating this like it was easy "Most parents have to worry about their kids crawling around unsupervised, _my_ kid was floating around on the fucking ceiling, Vegeta!"

She knew he wanted to snort at that but silently commended him on not doing so.

"I had to keep Senzus around in case he kicked me too hard, because I had no idea how strong he would be in there" she remembered her trepidation, as months passed, seeing her belly grow and her hunger increase considerably, with a Saiyan baby on the way.

"How would I manage _now_?" she asked, daring him.

"Because this time, I'll be here"

There it was. She was starting to unravel the mystery that was his request.

"Why do you want this?" she stopped beating around the bush.

She knew all his senses made him want to bolt. He was fidgeting, avoiding her gaze, frowning so intensely that he seemed like he would burst. Direct questions like those made him run for the hills. But if he was serious about this, he had to stay.

He sighed.

"I know I am home now" he looked at her in the eyes, open, vulnerable "You are my family, and I want to...I want a part of it to be our mutual plan, after so much time finding our way through things, stumbling through what came our way, trying to make the best out of whatever happened"

He kneeled, right in front of her, and took her hand.

"I want to try, for once, to make a plan together...because I trust _our future_ "

This was, for sure, the most honest and unguarded thing he had ever admitted to her. More than the time he finally said that he loved her. More than the time he told her how scared he was of losing her. More than the time he confided the truth about his sacrifice and saying goodbye to Trunks before he died.

After a lifetime of drifting through space, he finally relished in permanence.

Bulma sighed. Fuck this.

"I need you to promise me one thing" she said, after a long silence.

"Anything"

"I need you to promise me that we will never _ever_ make Trunks feel left out" her frown was more threatening than his ever was and her eyes were disarming.

"Left out?" he asked, puzzled.

"This will be planned, we will know more or less what we're doing, you'll be around for it all and you'll be a lot more amiable with this baby, because you're choosing to do this" she took his face in her hands "If Trunks ever feels like he's less than this baby, like he was a trial version of this kid, like we love him any less because we were young, fucked up versions of ourselves when we had him, I would never forgive myself, Vegeta"

It was clear that he hadn't thought about it. His bond with Trunks had strengthened in the last years. Not too long before his future self had arrived, he had come back from space with Vegeta, after an adventure Bulma never got to fully know about, and she didn't miss how much closer Trunks had been to his father and how much Vegeta looked for him, checked on him, when he didn't see him for long. She decided it was to stay between them, whatever had happened, but she noticed the change, a culmination, for the time being, of a long period of gradual mutual adjustment.  

Still, it hadn't been in Vegeta's top priorities to consider Trunks's feelings on this. He was also an older brother, but hadn't spent as much time being so, and didn't see the bigger picture as clearly as Bulma did.

"I'll talk to him"

That, she didn't expect. To say that he'd try, to promise her he'd do his best. But this...

"When the baby is on the way, I'll tell him and I'll talk to him" he was determined, clearly seeing what he had missed, and not wanting Trunks to feel the way Bulma feared he would.

She let go of him and sighed. He was set on this.

And, she had to admit, she was warming up to the idea herself, now that they had talked about her worries. She loved their family, with all their quirks and complications. And she would love their next baby. 

"Alright, then, who am I to say no to the royal Saiyan legacy?" she smiled at him, fondly, and saw his eyes shining with unshared bliss.

What a dork.

His lips found hers and he tasted like home. He caressed her hair, her neck, her back. His hands explored the skin under her nightshirt, mapping the contours of her body. Her hands held him with familiarity, with certainty. His lips traced their way through her mouth, her cheek, her earlobe.

"My Queen" he whispered, reverently.

He was home. Finally. 

**Author's Note:**

> I was writing a completely unrelated thing yet I woke up wanting to write a Vegebul one-shot. So, this is it. I've been a fan of DB for almost 20 years now, but I've never written for the fandom before, so this is a new and strange experience for me. I hope I didn't mess up too much, I've loved these two for a long, long time and I don't want to do them wrong. I'm also not an English speaker so some of the words that my dub used in the anime weren't the same and I tried to adapt. 
> 
> I have my canon reasons to headcanon Vegeta being the one proposing to have another kid, you probably don't wanna know them, but they exist. This fic was born out of me re-watching the Mirai Trunks saga of Super once again and thinking that, even if I think that it would have been nice for Mirai Trunks to meet Bra, maybe it works narratively this way because his parents re-encountering him under those circumstances could have prompted some talking that led to it. 
> 
> I used mostly the anime as a base for this, so most of the memories mentioned and plot elements as well as time frame are based on it, but the part about Bulma hugging Vegeta in public after coming back and his rejection is from the manga, even though I still kept for my fic that Bulma tagged along, like in the anime, because she needs to tag along more often tbh. 
> 
> Anyway, thank you so much for reading, I hope this wasn't entirely terrible!


End file.
